Learning Photographically - Every Experience Counts

When I went into the US Army to be all I could be, I went in as a US Army Photographer. During photographic training, I asked several times about making prints from slides. The close minded response was always, “That’s why we have negative film, soldier. Prints come from negatives and slides come from slides.”

I served 1 year in Korea. The second day I was there; my very first assignment was . . . you guessed it . . . 200 8x10 prints from existing slides. I tried to explain that the paper and chemicals for that did not even exist in the Army Supply system; but soon found it did exist
in the army Recreation Center. This is where I met Mr. Kim. He taught me how to make prints from slides. Since ours was a very small post, I went through all his chemicals and paper in a
very short amount of time. I had to find a bigger Recreation Center and fast, so I took the two hour bus ride to Soul.

Soul, Korea had twenty million people in it, twenty five years ago. Their recreation center was much bigger and had plenty of paper and chemicals; however they only had 1 more processing drum than our small recreation center. For those of you who don’t know, making prints from slides involves developing each print inside a light tight sealed drum. The process usually takes about 28 minutes per print. Now I had a whole new problem, I was physically running out of time to do that many prints, that’s when I met Mr. Lee.

Mr. Lee suggested I put two prints in each drum and develop 4 at a time. He explained that the paper has an emulsion side and a paper side. If the emulsion side touches anything else it will be ruined, however if you put paper side against paper side with the emulsion sides facing away from each other, you can indeed put two prints in each single print drum. This was a new photo tip to me at the time; emulsion to emulsion is a bad thing, but . . . backing to backing can actually be a great advantage and time saver. With Mr. Lee’s help I did manage to get my first project done just in the nick of time.

About a week later, I had to develop about 16 rolls of slide film in a very short amount of time. Again, I was faced with limitations of a very small recreation center. They only had 4 reels to develop the film on. I didn’t have the time to go to Soul, but thought about what I learned before. With a little bit of practice; I found I could also put two rolls of film on one reel and was finished within the allotted time.

I learned many things in Korea, but that process has stayed with me throughout my life.
First – I learned something new. (Prints from slides.)
Second – I learned how to improve the something new. (Two prints in one tank.)
Third – I learned how to adapt to something different. (Two rolls of film on one reel.)

To this day, I have NEVER seen a book or class that mentions developing two rolls of slide
film on one reel. It’s not easy. But it can be done.

The key to the learning process is very similar to learning photography in general.
First – You have to learn the basics. (Composition, Rule of Thirds, Etc.)
Second – You start to develop a style. (You start “Framing” your subject.)
Third – You take your work to the next level. (You realize that Framing and Rule of Thirds
can work on people shots too, not just nature.)

If most of your life you have taken Nature Shots, try shooting people. If your main source of income is wedding photography try shooting Nature. Apply all the tricks of the trade you have learned over the years in new and exciting ways. If you are used to taking portraits of adults try spending three hours with a two year old in the park.

A photo tip worth remembering is: to keep your work exciting and vibrant, you, the photographer have to be the same. Seeing things in new and exciting ways is a learned skill. Learning to see creatively is not something you only learn once and then you’re done. The truly great ones; those who will live on forever in the field of photography (Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Imogene Cunningham come to mind), are those who continued to learn and then relearn their craft every day of their lives.

This is the challenge I give to my students. “Don’t just learn something once. Learn it again and again. Creativity does not always mean creating from scratch. It means taking something you’ve already learned and applying it again and again in a new and exciting ways.”